The Phoenix Lady Saga Part 1 - Darkness
by R2-Helsing
Summary: AU. The war is over, and Fire Lord Zuko is establishing peace with the other nations. He has placed his sister, Azula, within an asylum to help her recover from her insanity.But her insanity has deeper roots than anyone else suspects, and the memories uncovered can lead to darkness. (Aang does not marry Katara in this). Rated M.


{DISCLAIMER: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sad but true. A/N: Azutara will serve as time skips, an apostrophe will designate thoughts, and this story won't feature any Azutara-ness. It's a lead-in to the Azutara story I'm planning.}

*The Phoenix Lady Part 1: Darkness*

"Azula?"

'Why won't they leave me alone?' she asked herself. She was in her cell, like she had always been for the past two years. She knew why she was here, of course; she never forgot - was never ALLOWED to forget - the reason.

"Azula?"

'There they are again,' she noted. Her face creased in confusion. 'Wait. Why are they back already? They were just here a moment ago, right?'

"Azula."

'I don't want to think about it,' she thought (again?). Every time the doctors or physicians or whoever they are come, they always ask the same questions; though the questions that are asked depend on who came in. I'm not an idiot, after all. I know why I'm in this Asylum, and I know who I am. I'm-

"Azula."

"I was thinking, you know," she replied, her tone flat but not hostile; it was supposed to mask the turmoil roiling inside her mind, but she knew it didn't fool the other person at all.

"Why haven't you talked before now?"

"Because I wasn't here until now," she answered.

"What do you mean by that?"

Finally, the girl who was once the Fire Lord of the Fire Nation turned and looked at the person in her cell. There was still madness in her gaze, but the near-isolation she'd endured over the last two years had actually served to lessen it some. The person before her was obviously from the Northern Water Tribe, and was probably a doctor of some kind.

"Do you know what it's like to be under the constant, crushing pressure of the need to be perfect?" she asked evenly, no trace of hostility in her voice.

"I'm afraid I don't," he replied.

"You can't survive that with your sanity intact," she told him, then didn't say anything else.

Azutara

'I don't want to remember,' she told her memories. 'I just want to forget.'

But, of course, her mind didn't listen to her. It had been a few months since she'd spoken to that healer. But he wasn't her only visitor. Her brother Zuko had stopped by once after she'd spoken, which made two times in the nearly two and a half years she'd been placed in the asylum. Azula was pretty sure she'd imagined those visits, though; after all, with what she'd done to him over the years he didn't have any reason to come see her.

(He's your brother), her memories whispered to her. (He placed you in here so you could get better).

'Better?' she asked the memories, even as they flashed her last days before the asylum before her mind's eye. 'What was wrong with me? I did what I was supposed to do, what Father wanted me to do.'

(But was that what you wanted to do?)

'Of course! I was a good daughter! I was a prodigy! I did everything he told me to do, without question!'

(But was that a good thing?)

Suddenly, Azula wasn't sure anymore. Visions flashed before her face, from throughout her childhood to the final days of the war and everything in between, but not in any specific order. A flashback from her childhood, of her playing with some dolls in her room, segued into a flashback of the attack on Ba Sing Se, when she had the waterbender Katara prisoner.

'It all started with her,' she thought. 'The Avatar's companion, Katara. I first saw back before my attacks on Ba Sing Se. I thought love was for fools, for the weak. I used to believe it was a joke, and that love at first sight was junk peasants said to explain such idiocy. Until I saw her. It was just a glimpse; a fleeting image of tan skin from the corner of my eye that caught my attention, and drew my golden eyes to pair of the deepest cerulean eyes I'd ever seen. In that moment, barely a thought long, I was lost.'

Azutara

"No," Azula said, shaking her head. It was three and a half years since the end of the war, three and a half years since she'd been locked away. She wasn't forgotten, though. Zuko always came, once a year it seemed, to personally check on her 'progress.' Katara came by more often; four or five times a year, it seemed. And the non-bender former Fire Lord had no idea why.

"No what, Azula?" Zuko asked, looking at his sister.

"What do you think, brother?" she replied. 'There are so many answers to that question,' she thought. "It's true that I'm not like I was when you first put me in here, but I'm not better. I remember why you put me in here, but I've intentionally repressed everything I've done since I was a kid."

For the first time that he could recall, Zuko saw fear and pain on his sister's face.

"My mind is . . . it's clearer than it's ever been, at least from what I remember. There aren't any voices in my head anymore, no more nightmares about what I've done. I've locked everything away; even regressed for a bit. Or so I've been told. Forgot who I was for a time, too."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid, Zuzu. Everybody here is afraid of me, terrified, even though I can't bend anymore. I'm afraid to remember the kind of person I was, if I'm treated like this. I . . . I wouldn't be able to handle it."

Azutara

She was in the room, again. The one she always found herself in whenever she slept. She knew what the only door in the room was, where it led, what it meant. She was afraid of that door. Staring at it, she kept herself as far from it as she could. But with each dream, the door was always closer. And behind it, as she knew and feared, was a seemingly endless hallway filled with door after door after door on both sides. And behind those doors . . . were the memories she'd locked away.

She sank down to the floor of the room, trying not to blink, her gaze not leaving the door. She failed, like she did every time, and the door was closer - just like every time. She whimpered as she drew her knees up to her chin, her arms wrapping around her shins as she tried to make herself as small as possible, hoping that would make the door stay away.

She'd first found herself in this room, that existed only in her head, a few months after Zuko had visited her last; she'd made the mistake of opening that one door that first time. And then compounded that mistake, and creating this recurring terror, by opening one of the doors in that endless hall beyond. Since then, she'd managed to keep herself in this room, away from its only exit, and had even kept it far from her for the first couple of months after she first found herself here; but ever since it would inch closer and closer to her, each time she blinked in the room. And each time she awoke and returned to sleep, it would inevitably be closer.

She'd tried staying awake, refusing to fall asleep, but the healers on staff began slipping herbs into her food that induced drowsiness and sleep; she had refused to eat once her still somewhat sleeps deprived mind figured out what was making her fall asleep, but that just made them restrain her and force-feed her. Those weren't pleasant experiences for her, or the staff when Katara (of all people) found out; she still didn't know why the waterbender bothered with her, but she did know the answers lay behind The Door.

She whimpered again as she shut her eyes and felt the door come closer . . . .

Azutara

'Five years,' she thought. 'I've been here for five years, and haven't been outside once.'

She was in the new 'cell' that Katara had insisted she have; it wasn't until her brother, Fire Lord Zuko, and Avatar Aang backed her that the asylum's administration had conceded. Though it looked like a small - a very small - apartment, it was nevertheless still a cell. Still, she was grateful that the last three months had been spent here instead of back in her 'comfortable' cell; although THAT one had at least been whitewashed stone walls with cream accents and a down-filled mattress/cot instead of the bare stone and pile of cloth-covered hay she'd originally had. She had no idea why she was thinking about being outside today, but she was.

'Perhaps it's because THIS cell, at least, has a window,' she answered herself.

She was sitting on the bed and staring out the window, since that's where the bed was positioned. She didn't know it, at first, but she soon discovered the smile on her face and knew its cause; it wasn't the increased freedom this 'room' represented, nor the fact that in the past year some of the staff had actually been interacting with her in at least a courteous manner.

It was because she was finally sensing the sun AND watching it. Sure, it was setting now, but that didn't matter, and neither did it matter that first night three months ago. Her smile faded, though, as she realized - as she had every night for those same three months - that that meant she'd soon be going to sleep.

And THAT meant she'd be in that room again.

Azutara

'And here I am again,' she thought as she 'woke' in the room. And, once again, she was before The Door. Ever since it had first 'caught' her, she'd given up staying away from it. She hadn't had a choice about going in The Door, but at least she didn't have to agonize about which memory to visit; all the doors were locked except for whichever one her subconscious decided to show her as THAT one would be open. And she ended these memory trips in the one she entered; somehow she'd always be shifted between random memories in nothing approaching chronological order. Sighing, she walked through The Door and immediately found one of the doors to her left open, the white light of an early memory filling the darkened, but not dark, hall.

~She was surprised to find herself outside in a courtyard. Her eyes soon widened, though, as recognition hit her: it wasn't just A courtyard, it was her FAMILY'S courtyard. The one to the left of the main courtyard (which of course led to the palace itself) and led to the royal family's private garden. She heard laughter coming from that direction, and went to investigate. Walking through the red and gold archway, Azula came to a disbelieving stop. The sight that met her shocked gaze was a memory long-repressed: she was watching her seven-year-old self playing with an eight-year-old Zuko, while her mom watched.

*Mother* she said, her voice having that echoing quality she'd come to learn meant she was merely an observer in this memory.

"Come back, Zuzu!" shouted the child Azula. "I'm only going to set your shoes on fire this time!"

Observer Azula chuckled as the memory played before her eyes; she remembered this day now; it was shortly after she'd begun exhibiting her firebending skills, though before it'd been learned she was a prodigy.

She continued to chuckle as child Zuko called out for their mother, and Fire Lady Ursa gently, with a little amusement, admonished child Azula for tormenting her brother.

'He was such weakling even then,' she thought, though it was with fondness now rather than the scorn it had once would've been. His firebending may have been weak, but his character and spirit weren't; after all, when it came down to the line, he'd sided with the Avatar and had brought her down. Sure, he'd had help from Katara, but she now realized that it wasn't really weakness to have help when it was needed; it was weakness to refuse help when it was needed.

At the end of the war, she'd been cast aside and left to fend for herself by her father. She'd had no one and nothing; whereas Zuzu had had friends and family he could trust and rely on. It'd been her fault she'd been alone, though; her growing madness and failing grip on reality had caused her to drive everyone away.

Suddenly, as she was watching, a small fireball shot by child Azula morphed into a large and powerful one that was barely dodged by a teenage Zuko. A sense of dread filled her as realization slammed into her; it was THE Agni Kai, the one Zuko had fought against their father. When he hadn't been smart enough to keep his mouth shut around their father, Fire Lord Ozai. Long after their mother had disappeared without a trace. 'Oh, no,' she thought, tears falling from her eyes. 'Not this day. Agni, please, not this memory.' Her pleas went unanswered; or perhaps the lack of a response was, in a way, her answer. As she witnessed the fight again, watched Zuko's doomed-to-fail efforts to defeat Ozai, she knew that the teenage Azula was nearby, observing with dark satisfaction Zuko's coming dishonor. Adult Azula, however, was feeling different emotions; anguish, despair, pain, and fear. She knew what was coming, how this would turn out. She also recalled how she'd felt on that day. The glee, the hunger, the now-sickening joy she'd had running through her as she had watched her brother's then-pathetic attempts to stand against the Fire Lord. Then came that moment when Zuzu was defeated, after Ozai had toyed with him. Followed by the permanent and highly visible sign of his dishonor; the scarring now-Fire Lord Zuko wore as a badge of honor and a reminder. Her scream echoed his own, but lasted longer, and was followed by the sound of laughter . . . .~

With a scream to rival the one in her dream, Azula bolted up in her bed, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Her sleeveless shirt and bedsheets were drenched with cold, fear-induced sweat; the sheets themselves clenched tightly by desperate hands.

Her scream had already faded from the room, as had its echoes, but the malicious laughter from that memory continued to echo within her mind.

Azutara

She wondered if they'd even been thinking when they'd sent someone in to care for her hair. It was a once a month scheduled occurrence, to keep her hair at a moderate length to make it easier for her to care for it herself. It'd been six months since she'd sunk into an increasingly deep and dark depression. And only Katara had noticed; the waterbender was barely around her when compared to the asylum's staff, yet SHE had easily noticed that something was off with the powerless firebender. The waterbending prodigy had tried to tell the healers and administrators about the growing malaise overtaking pale-skinned woman, but they'd brushed aside her concerns. And now she found herself alone, the woman tending to her hair having left the room-like cell for a reason Azula cared nothing about. The woman had also left behind her tools and supplies, trusting that because Azula had done nothing so far she wouldn't do anything at all.

'Fool,' she thought, but there was no emotion behind it, no force.

She'd given up completely now. Oh, the administrators and everyone else - but Katara - thought she was doing exceedingly well; after all, she wasn't psychotic anymore, and had regained her sanity. But that was actually what was wrong with her now. Getting her sanity back, then recovering all of her self-repressed memories, had driven her to a worse place than insanity; after all, she no longer had a buffer against the beyond overwhelming guilt caused by her actions from the age of eight until she had fully snapped at the end of the war. The guilt and depression had gotten worse and worse with each recovered memory. And it was always good interlaced with bad.

'No more,' she thought, blocking the door with a chair. She had no hope it would hold for long, but maybe it would be for long enough.

Going back to the low table in the main room, she knelt down beside it and pushed her sleeves back. It would've been quicker with her neck, but she wanted to watch as her monstrous life drained away.

"X marks the spot," she whispered as she carefully and precisely drew an x-shape across each of her forearms with the cutting implements left behind. She had let out a gasp at the initial pain brought by the first kiss of the sharp metal against her skin. After she'd begun on her second forearm, she heard pounding on the door as someone tried to get in.

I wonder if they'll get in?' she asked herself as she set down the tool and watched the red flow down her arms. 'Will it be in time?' she wondered. 'Or will it be too late? And what would too late be? Before or after the point of no return?'

Azula heard the door burst open, but faintly; as though the sound came from a great distance. Distantly, as well, she felt bindings go on her arms in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. She weakly tried to fight them, but strength had already left her and consciousness was following. As the darkness began to claim her, she felt her body being lifted up and carried; though whether this was her body itself or whatever monsters had for souls she didn't know nor cared to know. Only one word was on her mind, though it also escaped her lips unknowingly, and barely loud enough to be heard by a healer attempting to save the life of the Fire Lord's sister:

"Katara."

{E/N: and that's the end of Part 1 of The Phoenix Lady Saga. That little sentence right there should tell y'all that this isn't the end for Azula. But what will happen next? Gonna have to look for the answers in The Phoenix Lady Saga Part 2: Rebirth.}


End file.
